9-15 NYT artice on Minecraft: Obsession and Ed Tool!

What an interesting article! It sounds like Minecraft may be quickly catching on with educators, though I doubt that most will use it for very long. I've seen this trend towards hyping something new and then discarding it again many times throughout the history of education. Still, deviating from the usual school routine of “talk and chalk” has always excited me. Something about the new media excites me in a way that textbooks can't. But I understand some concerns of rotting kids' brains...ok maybe not rotting them, but distracting them from class might be a bigger issue. Like if a kid plays the game secretly on a computer while the teacher is talking instead of taking notes. I've seen some people pull tricks like that before. However these new teacher quests are what B.F Skinner would call presenting the information in a "new and interesting way."